“Half of Britons sceptical about evolution”

No contest this week: this one’s been picked up so many times you’ve probably already seen it in the Guardian, Telegraph and other outlets whose writers should have known better. For a start they should have bothered reading the results of a poll by Theos, instead of just regurgitating the bold claims made in its accompanying press release.

If Theos’s  funding from the Templeton Foundation  hadn’t set alarm bells ringing, Theos’s fondness for leading questions should have done:  Question 3 will have riled any believers wanting to stick it to those blasted atheists, while other questions come with questionable definitions to help guide respondents to the correct  answers. Even that figure of 50% seems to have been exaggerated: 25% of the doubters simply seem confused. Can a person really doubt evolution and favour creationism when they don’t understand either?

This is not the first time Theos have attempted to dance on Darwin’s grave (the site helpfully points out the location of Darwin’s grave,  should you want to slip on your dancing shoes and join them): an earlier Theos poll asked: “2009 is the anniversary of the birth of a famous British scientist. Do you know who it is?” The results showed that around 21% of people answered “Charles Darwin”, while 0% answered “every famous British scientist ever born”. Pointing out that it was the 200th anniversary of the birth in question might have given the respondents more of a chance (and told them it wasn’t Stephen Hawking), so why leave that rather major detail out? Putting it in wouldn’t have given them the result they wanted for their press release, but it would have given them something more than a page of meaningless numbers.